The argument is that there is a diseconomies of scale in providing for 320 million people versus a few million (Canada's single-payer is funded on the provincial level.) If this weren't the case, then Canada would have a national system, which it does not. Americans spend more on healthcare because they demand luxury care (amazing ly comfortable hospitals; end of life care ; etc.) Single-payer systems don't provide this, and it is hard to imagine a national single-payer system which would provide all of the various drugs and benefits needed in the same way that competing insurance companies would. Multi payer in the vein of Switzerland or the Netherlands seems like the way to go.
You make it sound as if a National healthcare system erodes healthcare quality. It doesn't. I work in the health industry as a Carer looking after the Disabled, Sick and Elderly. I can assure you it's modern, high-quality care. I got a new, modern hostpital for instance:
The USA falters in most of the important statistics. While being more expensive.
The "Higher population" argument is also an invalid one. The costs are done on a per-capita basis, if anything a larger population with a larger amount of patients should give the USA an advantage in the cost statistics, if you have such a large proprtion of the population not paying anything and not accessing your healthcare system, then the per-capita costs are likely higher than the 2.5x of the OECD average for those that are actually paying and using it. And even if you combined multiple large countries, it still works out superior to that of the US of A.
So everybody wants our lower quality healthcare system ?
Got it! So everybody wants to waive more malpractices, have less specialists, inferior medical technology infrastructure and less access to available treatment methods ...
How is the US's system slower? That is certainly a new criticism, and a bit laughable considering you're comparing it to Canada.
The US's healthcare system is no different from any other private industry. If you can afford it, you can get whatever level of care you want.
Which is a very crappy system in my opinion, healthcare shouldn't be only for the elite.
It is not, the poor qualify for Medicaid already. Since healthcare is scarce (there are a limited number of doctors, drugs, hospitals) we can't give top of the lime care to everyone. There has to be some mechanism to deal with scarcity.
So everybody wants our lower quality healthcare system ?
Got it! So everybody wants to waive more malpractices, have less specialists, inferior medical technology infrastructure and less access to available treatment methods ...
No, I don't think anyone's advocating Antarctica-style healthcare.
Which is a very crappy system in my opinion, healthcare shouldn't be only for the elite.
It is not, the poor qualify for Medicaid already. Since healthcare is scarce (there are a limited number of doctors, drugs, hospitals) we can't give top of the lime care to everyone. There has to be some mechanism to deal with scarcity.
And that's by saying too bad, so sad to poorer people?
You make it sound as if a National healthcare system erodes healthcare quality. It doesn't. I work in the health industry as a Carer looking after the Disabled, Sick and Elderly. I can assure you it's modern, high-quality care. I got a new, modern hostpital for instance:
The USA falters in most of the important statistics. While being more expensive.
The "Higher population" argument is also an invalid one. The costs are done on a per-capita basis, if anything a larger population with a larger amount of patients should give the USA an advantage in the cost statistics, if you have such a large proprtion of the population not paying anything and not accessing your healthcare system, then the per-capita costs are likely higher than the 2.5x of the OECD average for those that are actually paying and using it. And even if you combined multiple large countries, it still works out superior to that of the US of A.
One size fits all health-care funding erodes health-care quality. The only national system in your infographic is the NHS in the U.K, and it falls behind France, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and other countries with multi-payer systems in many ways, such as wait-times, and speciality care. All of the other countries in that infographic have devolved (non-national) systems with a strong dependence on suplementary private care, or private insurance as their main mechanism.
Diseconomies of scale affect all goods. An example of this in the health-care industry is how the British government has yet to approve P.R.E.P as a covered drug because the potential population is a minority. In a mixed non-nationalized system, like in the United States, one can easily find a company which will cover P.R.E.P. The larger the population, the more likely minority groups with specific health-concerns or conditions will be ignored and unhappy. That is why countries with single-payer tend to either be small, or devolve the funding so that the priorities match the wants of their populations more directly. It is also why private care is promoted in mixed systems (Germany, Japan, France) and mostly private systems (the Netherlands, Switzerland.)
Costs aren't the be all, end all when certain populations are ignored. Nationalized systems are good at providing general care that everybody can make use of, but suck at providing to specialized needs, and that is why you need a strong private or devolved system to either replace or complement it.
Hence why most countries with single-payer don't have nationalized systems, but develoved systems.
One last thing, you can't compare costs on a per-capita basis without considering so many other lurking variables. One to one regressions don't work here, because this is not a single-variable system. When all variables are considered, the argument is less statistically signficant.
Combining "multiple large countries" is doesn't work either, because they are all different with different systems, and the distribution and spending is happening in each country (not for all of them). That is the entire point of economies of scales and diseconomies of scales. Scale factors affect costs.
It is not, the poor qualify for Medicaid already. Since healthcare is scarce (there are a limited number of doctors, drugs, hospitals) we can't give top of the lime care to everyone. There has to be some mechanism to deal with scarcity.
And that's by saying too bad, so sad to poorer people?
Absolutely not, medicaid works quite fine in providing poor people with basic care at no cost. I grew up on it. Besides a little extra work finding doctors who accepted it, it works fine, in fact often better than the care provided in other systems, because we can focus on the poor and not give subsidies to the middle class. In the United States people with medicaid can get dental work, and eye care whilst these cost extra in other countries.
And that's by saying too bad, so sad to poorer people?
Absolutely not, medicaid works quite fine in providing poor people with basic care at no cost. I grew up on it. Besides a little extra work finding doctors who accepted it, it works fine, in fact often better than the care provided in other systems, because we can focus on the poor and not give subsidies to the middle class. In the United States people with medicaid can get dental work, and eye care whilst these cost extra in other countries.
What? My aunt and uncle are classified as low income, and they were not able to have subsidized health care until just a few years ago. Even now, my aunt and uncle are in fear of losing their health care plan.
Absolutely not, medicaid works quite fine in providing poor people with basic care at no cost. I grew up on it. Besides a little extra work finding doctors who accepted it, it works fine, in fact often better than the care provided in other systems, because we can focus on the poor and not give subsidies to the middle class. In the United States people with medicaid can get dental work, and eye care whilst these cost extra in other countries.
What? My aunt and uncle are classified as low income, and they were not able to have subsidized health care until just a few years ago. Even now, my aunt and uncle are in fear of losing their health care plan.
Medicaid is distributed on the state level. In my state there are cutoffs for a single person household at $1,360 /month (it increases every year) and for a four person household at $2,800 / month. If one has an infant, they could make up to $3,200 /month and still qualify for medicaid.
This matches the poverty rate in the U.S quite fine (the percentiles for the income are 15% (for single household) to 30%(for four person household and the Federal poverty estimation is 14.5% of the population.)
About 20% of the population gets Medicaid when only 14.5% are below the poverty line (disabled people also qualify.) So, it seems to be working well.
Currently Online 
